While industrial activities can't be ruled out as a cause of Michigan's recent earthquakes, Benz said, "these quakes look tectonic," or related to the natural processes of the Earth's crust.

The culprit could even be glacial rebound — land masses pressed down by millions of tons of ice during Michigan's last glacial period about 12,000 years ago beginning to rise, Benz said.

In Southern California, where earthquakes are frequent, fault lines are well-known, and a tremendous amount of study and technology is deployed. But much less of a look has been taken at relatively earthquake-free places, like Michigan...-Latest Michigan quake has scientists puzzled

"The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope" -- Robert E. Lee in a Letter to Lt. Col. Charles Marshall (September 1870).

Have to work on myself for a while. Cut out the bad food. Too much fast food and junk food, especially in the last few weeks since my dad died, due in part to bad advice from a Facebook friend, with whom I had shared the hard time I was having dealing with my dad's passing. His answer: "Eat". He said you should feed grief. So I drowned my sorrows in burgers and fries instead of vodka (well, there was some of that, too, but the food dominated). I had expected to drop pounds, as many do when suffering great grief, and believe I would have, but the advice took over my thinking, and I starting putting on more pounds. It wasn't all food, either, I began to drink a lot of soda, too.

So, now I must reverse the process, eat better, cut calories, cut out the soda, alcohol and junk from my diet, and finally lose weight for good. I also have to pay off my credit cards, and find a decent place to live (that last is hard with the cost of rent in my area). But I have to start somewhere, I've been running in place too long.

So sometimes the good stuff is really bad stuff, just as in life, we so often mistake what is harmful for something good. Try posting something negative about online pornography for example. Even amongst non-liberals, at least if they're male, you'll get lots of push back and proclamations of porno love. Sure, temptations are hard to resist, but so is junk food, but it's not impossible. We have free will, let's exercise it.

I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook lately. Sometimes my FB news feed is like am/pm. Too much good stuff. Things and stories I want to post about here at the blog, but then frustration sets in. I get overwhelmed.

Of course, I need to avoid the am pm "good stuff", it's one of things that is harming my health. I'm actually starting to look like the fat cartoon guy in this video:

If that's an actual am/pm commercial, I find it bizarre. I mean, were they promoting am/pm as the way to obesity? That becoming overweight from consuming all that "good stuff" is itself a good thing?

Monday, June 29, 2015

We were at a baptism today, conducted early in the morning at a nearby lake. It was expected to be a fairly private affair, with only a few friends and family present, but about a dozen strangers were there, including one very old man styling in a three-piece suit and fedora with a cane and a waist-fob on his vest.

Afterwards, the old man commented, "magnificent, magnificent." And when I expressed my surprise at the presence of him and the others from the community who didn't know the individual being baptized, he gestured around us to indicate everyone present. "Ah, but we are the Village of Light," he said.

A block chain is a transaction database shared by all nodes participating in a system based on the Bitcoin protocol. A full copy of a currency's block chain contains every transaction ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address at any point in history.

Every block contains a hash of the previous block. This has the effect of creating a chain of blocks from the genesis block to the current block. Each block is guaranteed to come after the previous block chronologically because the previous block's hash would otherwise not be known. Each block is also computationally impractical to modify once it has been in the chain for a while because every block after it would also have to be regenerated. These properties are what make double-spending of bitcoins very difficult. The block chain is the main innovation of Bitcoin.

Honest generators only build onto a block (by referencing it in blocks they create) if it is the latest block in the longest valid chain. "Length" is calculated as total combined difficulty of that chain, not number of blocks, though this distinction is only important in the context of a few potential attacks. A chain is valid if all of the blocks and transactions within it are valid, and only if it starts with the genesis block.

For any block on the chain, there is only one path to the genesis block. Coming from the genesis block, however, there can be forks. One-block forks are created from time to time when two blocks are created just a few seconds apart. When that happens, generating nodes build onto whichever one of the blocks they received first. Whichever block ends up being included in the next block becomes part of the main chain because that chain is longer. More serious forks have occurred after fixing bugs that required backward-incompatible changes.

Blocks in shorter chains (or invalid chains) are not used for anything. When the bitcoin client switches to another, longer chain, all valid transactions of the blocks inside the shorter chain are re-added to the pool of queued transactions and will be included in another block. The reward for the blocks on the shorter chain will not be present in the longest chain, so they will be practically lost, which is why a network-enforced 100-block maturation time for generations exists.

These blocks on the shorter chains are often called "orphan" blocks. This is because the generation transactions do not have a parent block in the longest chain, so these generation transactions show up as orphan in the listtransactions RPC call. Several pools have misinterpreted these messages and started calling their blocks "orphans". In reality, these blocks have a parent block, and might even have children.

Because a block can only reference one previous block, it is impossible for two forked chains to merge.

Carol Bowne was under no illusions; she knew she was in danger. Her ex-boyfriend, Michael Eitel, had a history of violence and an overt desire to cause her harm. The NJ hairdresser added a home security system and filed a protective order to keep Eitel away from her. She also began the process to purchase a handgun. This was in April. At the time of her death on June 10, Bowne was unarmed— her firearm permit application still under consideration by the state of New Jersey.-The Cost of New Jersey Gun Control

Stop calling it gun control! It's people control, and a violation of basic civil liberties and human rights.

I once had a Marxist college instructor who asked the class why we needed so many different brands of toothpaste, and actually proposed that observation as evidence of the wastefulness of capitalism and superiority of the Communist governments of the Eastern Bloc countries.

He admits he has "voted time and time again for strong gun control", so, he's just another statist asshole that pretends to be on the side of common people.

Someone else predicts his victory as well:

On May 12th, I presented my analysis of the polling as of that time, headlining, “The Early Signs of Whom The Next U.S. President Will Likely Be: Presidential Polls Look Confusing Regarding Bernie, But Downright Bad Regarding Hillary & All Republicans.” Based on the net-favorability ratings of candidates in the first poll that had really meaningful results on that most important of all factors (which poll had just been published), and also based on the latest available reliable poll of Americans’ ideological preferences (which had been taken in 2011, but that’s okay because ideology changes only very slowly), I concluded that Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders was likely to surprise on the upside at the start of his contest, and that, “Sanders would probably be able to crush any Republican except perhaps Rand Paul, if he were to win the Democratic primaries.” He is already surprising on the upside (though pundits haven’t yet caught on that Hillary’s a dud), and so I am now predicting that Sanders will win, first, the Democratic nomination, and then the White House.-My Prediction: Bernie Sanders Will Win the White House

Saturday, June 27, 2015

The systemic question is this: if ultimate, arbitrary authority in our country is going to be in the hands of a small, unelected group, are politically connected lawyers our choice? In Egypt and Myanmar, the army has the final say; in Iran, it's the mullahs; in Brunei and Saudi Arabia, they have royal families. We have 9 lawyers. Is this a good system?

Personally, I'd prefer 9 used-car salesmen or 9 Amway dealers.
If we're going to have 9 lawyers hold ultimate authority, do Harvard Law and Yale Law deserve 100% of the seats on the committee? Why? --Kevin Gutzman

TO ALL OF OUR FRIENDS AND FANS FROM BEN JONES AKA “COOTER”
I THINK ALL OF HAZZARD NATION UNDERSTANDS THAT THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE
FLAG IS THE SYMBOL THAT REPRESENTS THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF
INDEPENDENCE WHICH KEEPS US “MAKIN’ OUR WAY THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW HOW.”
THAT FLAG ON TOP OF THE GENERAL LEE MADE A STATEMENT THAT THE VALUES
OF THE RURAL SOUTH WERE THE VALUES OF COURAGE AND FAMILY AND GOOD TIMES.
OUR BELOVED SYMBOL IS NOW BEING ATTACKED IN A WAVE OF POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS THAT IS UNPRECEDENTED IN OUR NATION OF FREE SPEECH AND FREE
EXPRESSION. ACTIVISTS AND POLITICIANS ARE VILIFYING SOUTHERN CULTURE AND
OUR HERITAGE AS BEING BIGOTED AND RACIST. WE KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT THE
CASE. AND WE KNOW THAT IN HAZZARD COUNTY THERE WAS NEVER ANY RACISM.
THOUGH THE FLAG HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM SUCH PLACES AS WALMART, TARGET
AND AMAZON, IT WILL NEVER BE REMOVED FROM ANY OF OUR COOTER’S STORES AND
MUSEUMS. WE ARE ALL THE SAME GOOD PEOPLE TODAY THAT WE WERE LAST WEEK
AND LAST YEAR AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO BE SHAMED INTO TURNING OUR BACKS
ON OUR HERITAGE AND OUR CONVICTIONS.
WE ARE NOT RACISTS. WE DESPISE RACISM AND BIGOTRY. AND WE THINK THE
PEOPLE WHO ARE CREATING THIS “CULTURAL CLEANSING” ARE THE REAL BIGOTS IN
THIS STORY.
WHEN WE SAY OUR FLAG STANDS FOR “HERITAGE, NOT HATE” AND “PRIDE, NOT
PREJUDICE”, WE MEAN IT. AND WE BELIEVE THAT OLD SAYING, “YOU CAN’T KNOW
WHERE YOU ARE GOING IF YOU FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM.”
COOTER’S IS GOING TO CONTINUE TO SELL OUR SOUTHERN SYMBOLS AS LONG AS
THERE IS A COOTER’S. I WILL FIGHT THESE PEOPLE UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER,
AND THEN I WILL FIGHT THEM ON THE ICE.

The Spanish Civil War ended in Franco's victory in 1939 and ended well for the Western democracies that had not intervened.

When Hitler, after occupying France in 1940, met with Franco to ask permission for the Wehrmacht to cross Spain to attack Gibraltar, Franco said no and put troops in the Pyrenees to enforce his decision.

Unlike Mussolini, Franco remained a nonbelligerent in the world war, returned U.S. pilots who came down in Spain and agreed to a postwar alliance with the United States.

Non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War worked out just fine. - Pat Buchanan

Even if every member of Congress and the president were warmongers, they would be unable to wreak any death and destruction abroad if no one would go forth and do the deeds. Even if every legislator in the land were wicked and determined to imprison people for victimless crimes, they would be unable to put a single victim behind bars if no one would go forth to make the arrests, prosecute those charged, and maintain the prisons. At some point we must recognize that blaming the leaders for the state's evil and giving a pass to its soldiers and cops is a grave mistake in moral reasoning.

It does not follow, however, that people who pay taxes under threat of the state's violent retribution are equally complicit in the state's evils. Taxpayers do not voluntarily cooperate but merely capitulate under duress. Everyone recognizes that "agreements" or cooperation elicited under duress are illegitimate. Taxpayers are not so much guilty parties as victims themselves.-Robert Higgs

“The Supreme Court has abandoned its role as an impartial judicial arbiter and has become an unelected nine-member legislature. Five Justices on the Supreme Court have imposed on the entire country their personal views on an issue that the Constitution and the Court’s previous decisions reserve to the people of the States.

“Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings, Texans’ fundamental right to religious liberty remains protected. No Texan is required by the Supreme Court’s decision to act contrary to his or her religious beliefs regarding marriage.

“The Texas Constitution guarantees that ‘[n]o human authority ought, in any case whatsoever, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience in matters of religion.’ The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion; and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, combined with the newly enacted Pastor Protection Act, provide robust legal protections to Texans whose faith commands them to adhere to the traditional understanding of marriage.

“As I have done in the past, I will continue to defend the religious liberties of all Texans—including those whose conscience dictates that marriage is only the union of one man and one woman. Later today, I will be issuing a directive to state agencies instructing them to prioritize the protection of Texans’ religious liberties.”
- Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas

Thursday, June 25, 2015

"They mention that he once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan and what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means, it means he was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia and he was trying to get elected"- Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton on Robert "KKK" Byrd

Fleeting? "In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan."-A Senator's Shame

Mice, which have relatively short life spans, provided details about fasting's lifelong effects. Yeast, which are simpler organisms, allowed Longo to uncover the biological mechanisms that fasting triggers at a cellular level. And a pilot study in humans found evidence that the mouse and yeast studies were applicable to humans.

'Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be dangerous, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body,' said Longo, Edna M. Jones professor of biogerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute. Longo has a joint appointment at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. 'I've personally tried both, and the fasting mimicking diet is a lot easier and also a lot safer.'

The diet slashed the individual's caloric intake down to 34 to 54 percent of normal, with a specific composition of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients. It decreased amounts of the hormone IGF-I, which is required during development to grow, but it is a promoter of aging and has been linked to cancer susceptibility. It also increased the amount of the hormone IGFBP-, and reduced biomarkers/risk factors linked to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, including glucose, trunk fat and C-reactive protein without negatively affecting muscle and bone mass.-Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

...Hey, he sang the praises of the General Lee, the Dodge Charger with the Confederate battle flag on the roof. Why not? The filthy, dirty, disgusting leftists are calling for the destruction of history and the banishment of everything from the flag to Gone With the Wind.

This either will or will not resonate with you: The company that makes Matchbox cars no longer will produce the Dukes of Hazzard “General Lee” Dodge Charger with the Confederate flag painted on its roof. If you go to E-bay you will see these cars now selling for hundreds of dollars. (Ain’t markets wonderful!) Now, I’m a gut reflex northerner. Most or all of my family arrived in the U.S. long after the Civil War was over. Had they been here, I doubt that they would have been in favor of slavery or been southern sympathizers. Personally, I don’t think that slavery was something with which I would have sympathized (I understand and respect your more complex view). Not having a television, I’ve never seen a Dukes of Hazzard episode. But retroactively undoing the flag symbolism on the car smacks of pure Memory Hole.

Rant over, back to work.

Best,
Bob

Dear Bob:

I plan to blog this, but I’ll keep you anonymous.

For my response, gentle reader, keep reading

There was no “civil war” in 1861. This was a war of northern aggression. ‘Twas a war to prevent southern secession. The north had slavery too in those days, so getting rid of the southern (Confederate) flag, but not the northern, is hardly symbolic of opposing slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery only in the south, not the north. Yes, “memory hole” indeed. Do read Tom DiLorenzo on this important issue.

Thanks for acknowledging my “complex” views on slavery. Here is a bibliography on voluntary slavery:

“Take the case of slavery. Why should people not be allowed to sign private contracts binding them to slavery? In fact economists have consistently argued against slavery – during the 19th century David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill engaged in a heated public debate with literary luminaries such as Charles Dickens, with the economists opposing slavery, and the literary giants arguing in favor.” –Against Intellectual Monopoly, p. 254.

It’s been claimed that ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and incredibly dangerous. But where does this ninety-seven percent claim come from, and more importantly - is it true?-https://youtu.be/yTTaXqVEGkU

I would have loved to have one of those in my backyard when I was a kid. The best I remember us having for cooling off in summer was a Slip 'N Slide. Well, there was that swimming pool at one of our homes (we moved a lot) and it was pretty great, but damn, that slide would have been fantastic. We never had a dog, just cats from time to time, but I don't think...wait, maybe...

No, I was right, cats don't go down waterslides, and that cat video was not only fake, it also sucked!

The point is, it's possible to have fewer, or even no, retail employees. As more and more idiocy and illogical political left-wing woo (yeah, I'm throwing that term of derision back at the secularist materialists, most whom are political "liberals" who attack belief in the afterlife, intelligent design, existence of God, etc. as "woo-woo", while believing in the magic wand of the state, that can command wages to rise by fiat, not supply and demand; they believe in political creationism and see no irony in the fact that they hold to such superstitious nonsense in the face of the facts of reality) is implemented, the market will respond with ways to get rid of employees who simply aren't worth $15 an hour (or whatever the current arbitrary "living wage" advocated by economic ignoramuses happens to be).

As business is squeezed more and more by the lying politicians, jobs, especially jobs for low-skilled and inexperienced workers, will begin disappearing. It is only a matter of time.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it's not that you are anti-gun. You'll need the police's guns to take away other people's guns. So you are very pro-gun, you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small, political elite and their minions. - Stefan Molyneux

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Saw this years ago, ostensibly it's about God, but you could have fooled me, not much in the way of real argument on either side.

One thing I got from it, the fool Hitchens didn't like being "treated like a freak" in America. Well, then, he shouldn't have been a lying, drunken, God-denying freak. We also learn that Hitchens is full of hate and liked seeing the US military kill people, lots of them.

Today, June 14, is my dad's birthday. It is also Flag Day. He would always talk about Flag Day and his birthday coinciding. He once made jokes about the flags on Flag Day being in celebration of his birthday.

My dad took joy in very simple things. Every year I gave him a birthday card, and it always meant so much to him. In 2012 I remember the emotion he expressed when I gave him his birthday card. He said that he and I were the closest and that it had always been that way. He had tears in his eyes. This is the first birthday of his since he passed away. It is hard for me today, but I love my dad so much, so I still want to wish him a happy birthday.

He promised he would be waiting on the other side, so here is to your day, Dad. I hope you are enjoying some angel food cake today. I love you!

What’s Flag Day? It’s the American celebration of the birthday of the Stars and Stripes. On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress passed a resolution “that the flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with a union of thirteen stars of white on a blue field, representing the new constellation”.

So Happy 238th birthday, Old Glory. Long may you wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.-Flag Day: What it means

Dad's Journal: Flag Day 2005

Dad kept a daily journal for many years, and up until June of last year, 2014, he still wrote daily, but then suddenly stopped. His hands were crippled with arthritis and he could barely hold a pen anymore and his writing was becoming very shaky and illegible at times. He gave it up, but still wrote occasional notes in a smaller notebook up until October of last year. I'm so glad he had the discipline to write every day. His journals have kept me connected to him in a very special way. I don't have them stored with me, but every few weeks I go get a few to have with me and read. Below is his entry from June 14, 2005, exactly ten years ago.

Tuesday 6-14-2005 "flag day"

Up at 7:45am washed & shaved, to donut shop I had bagel sandwich sausage and egg & coffee. Washed clothes, set up solar lights on front lawn. Mr.and Mrs. D, Winnard and Dona, left for El Cajon to eat out and get pills (Winnard) from Sav-On drugs.

I left at 11:30am I first put $20.00 gas in Explorer then to GMC [Grossmont Center] I first went to Grossmont Nutrition for birthday cards 49¢-99¢ "can't beat the prices"! On to B&N [Barnes and Nobel] to have a small coffee & a cookie while I read for a while.

Back to Merritt Blvd. Filled bird feeders (3) did some watering then took a walk to Johnny B's & back 3pm-4:10pm. Hot & humid today & I was hot & tired & took a shower then ironed pants and dress shirt for Shawn for work tomorrow.
I fixed pasta noodles tuna and mushroom soup, bread & salad for our dinner. Watch Storm Stories on TV, to my room at 10pm to listen to Coast to Coast AM.

Birthday card from Dona & a very touching card from my son Shawn "which I'll always treasure". A call from my daughter Tana to wish me a happy birthday.

Hello Trees! I said as I walked through the park.
Hey you are very tall, some of you, much taller than me!
I suppose that means I'm less significant than you
and that the Universe was designed with trees in mind!

Oh well, I don't care!
I can still chop you down,
turn you into firewood,
or build a house out of you,
carve a bear,
make a boat,
sail away,
and realize,
out on the waves,
that I'm more important than you,
for you, trees, create nothing,
and don't even think,
as I do,
for I have a mind,
as does your creator.
I still love ya, trees,
but you don't know that.
God does,
and that's what matters.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

The movement against miracles was, not surprisingly, influential in the natural sciences. Simply put, if we’re not to appeal to miracles, then the world must have arisen naturalistically. This had a profound effect on the critical thinking, or lack thereof, of the time. Speculative hypotheses, with little basis in fact, enjoyed serious consideration and triumphant acceptance.

The bar was placed exceedingly low for such theories as pure conjecture became acceptable and celebrated science. Monumental scientific problems with the notion of spontaneous origins went ignored and evolutionary theories (from cosmological to biological) soon became “fact.”

Today strictly naturalistic, evolutionary, theories are a given. They simply are accepted as true, or as true as anything in science can be. And it also is a given that miracles are false. But what evolutionists prefer to overlook is that there is a causal relationship here. The latter made way for, and mandated, the former.-Miracles are a Glaring Problem for Evolution, and Here’s Why

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The
Holocaust is one of the best documented events in history. “Holocaust
denial” describes attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi
genocide of European Jewry. Common denial assertions are: that the
murder of six million Jews during World War II never occurred; that the
Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate the Jews; and
that the poison gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp never
existed.

A newer trend is the distortion of the facts of the
Holocaust. Common distortions include, for example, assertions that: the
figure of six million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration; deaths in the
concentration camps were the results of disease or starvation but not
policy; and that the diary of Anne Frank is a forgery.-http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008003

We are all loved, we are all important. In the eyes of God, as it should be with our own eyes, we are all equally loved and important, from the schizophrenic alcoholic on the street corner to the biggest movie star there is.-The Atheistic, Nihilistic Despair Of Birdman

It’s a counter-intuitive notion, since tobacco smoking causes cancer, marijuana smoking must as well. But as the LA Weekly highlights Monday, it’s just not true. Decades of pulmonary research is in: pot decreases the risk of lung cancer and does not cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).-Worth repeating: marijuana decreases risk of lung cancer

But, he says, “Through my studies, we failed to find any positive association.” Instead, “the association would be negative, between lung cancer and the use of marijuana. The likelihood is, that despite the fact that marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, we don’t see the same heightened risks of cancers that we see in tobacco.”-UCLA Professor Finds Marijuana Is Safer to Smoke Than Tobacco

The story is as factual as I can make it. The only known historical inaccuracies are:

1.
Mellersh does claim a Triplane shot down that day, but it was in fact
Wolff, and he didn't "explode", but returned home and landed safely
after spinning towards the ground under Mellersh's fire.

2. The
two seaters depicted in game are not Albatros (as they should be) But
DFW's, not represented in game (yet!) The story should really have
RE8's too...

3. A few of the Jasta colours are incorrectly shown - they are "mixed and matched" to a degree to represent the "Flying Circus".

The
rest is, as it should be, as far as possible, but comments,
suggestions towards the much disputed legend of Richthofen's death are
welcome! He was reported to have been pulled alive from the aircraft
saying "Kaput".. But this seems unlikely due to the nature of his wound.-from the YouTube description here: https://youtu.be/ywug11nLFfg

While a human is alive his mind and his brain are connected. No one doubts that. Just as assuredly, no one doubts that their own immaterial mind exists. And when I say no one doubts that, I include people like Sam Harris who say they do. Harris does not really doubt that his own mind exists. How do I know? Well, I am fairly sure Harris is not insane, and only an insane person asserts as false that which he must know to be true. It is an odd thing though. If Harris were to say “I’m a poached egg” they would put him in a padded room. But if he says the ontologically equivalent “I’m a meat robot,” they give him a book contract.

Denying that one’s own immaterial mind exists is nuts on the order of “I deny that the pronoun ‘I’ in this sentence has any antecedent.” And Sam Harris, like everyone else, knows for a certain fact that there is indeed an antecedent to that pronoun. Because the existence of one’s immaterial mind is self-evident, its existence can be denied only on pain of descending into patent absurdity.-On Invoking Non-Physical Mental States to “Solve the Problem” of Consciousness

Those who work with the dying are familiar with patients seeing long deceased loved ones, angelic beings, even hearing music and comforting voices as the patient nears death. Deathbed phenomena have been documented in the days, weeks, and months before death since the 1500s. Often confused with hallucinations, deathbed phenomena can bring comfort to patients and caregivers if those involved know what they are experiencing. This talk will explain deathbed phenomena and present on-going research about the topic. Accounts from the dying and bedside witnesses will be shared.-https://youtu.be/vg8WAv0YT9c

A school field trip to the Smitten Kitten adult toy store is raising some eyebrows, and may soon involve the Minneapolis Police Department. School leaders at Gaia Democratic School in Minneapolis still fully support the trip to the Smitten Kitten in Uptown, a self-proclaimed “progressive sex toy store for everyone.”-https://youtu.be/RVAwI5X8EfI

"The chicken is really tough and chewy and kind of rubbery" Jason's verdict: 5 out of 10.

Wow! Very disappointing. Sounded like it would be a good sandwich. Too bad. Maybe it was just an anomaly, an old batch of chicken or something. Still, I'd be reluctant to try it now.

Disappointment 2: Dairy Queen buffalo chicken snack melt

Jason's verdict: Taste 9 out of 10, value 4 out of 10.

Well, at least this was better than the sandwich, but I agree, the price is too high for what you get. I guess the 5 buck lunch deals seem okay, though. I haven't been to Dairy Queen in a long time. We always used to go for the ice cream anyway.

Conservative taste is taste. We stand for standards: melody in music, perspective in drawing and painting, soaring & sublime beauty sculpted in stone for architecture, plot and theme in storytelling, and so on.

We have the Saint John’s Passion by Bach, the paintings of Bouguereau, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien.

Morlockery is untaste. They stand for scrawling graffiti on standards and urinating and vomiting and excreting on them. They stand for atonal cacophony in music, bleary visual mess in drawing and painting, inhuman blocks of concrete and featureless steel in architecture, dreary incoherent psychopathy in the written word.

They have the music of Scriabin, the spastic scrawls of Picasso, the soul-crushing ulginess of Corbusier, and Ulysses by James Joyce. - John C. Wright

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Oh well, David Hume's reputation as a philosopher is so bloated and overrated anyway...

Cleanthes would wonder, in turn, why it's valid to criticize theological concepts as ad hoc, while it's simultaneously permissible to postulate the existence of universes whose existence is entirely unproven and which may be forever untestable. He'd also wonder why the order in the universe is such a pressing scientific problem as to justify postulating a vast number of alternate universes but not to justify postulating an intelligent designer.-David Hume and the Argument from Design

Caitlyn Horse (formerly Bruce Cat): "All my life, I've been chasing mice, meowing, licking my fur, when I knew my real desire was to run in the Kentucky derby, wear shoes, eat oats and hay and sleep standing up (I've been practicing that last one). I'm really a horse, not a cat, you see."

Ann Coulter is a withered old hag who uses shock value to sell books. Look at her face. What is she, 40? And her hair? Come on. Are we supposed to take this “woman” seriously? Her latest incarnation of Mein Kampf says Adios, America on the front but should really be called Mexicans Are Human Garbage. I haven’t read it yet but the claims she makes in the book are as disgusting as they are outrageous. It all came out on a recent appearance of Fusion with Jorge (pronounced “Hor-jay”) Ramos. As the title implies, his show brings together all kinds of different cultures into a fun plate of multiculturalism that’s like fusion cuisine for the brain. (If you don’t believe diversity is our strength, check out all the cool restaurants in New York City. You can be served by a Somalian one day, a Turk the next, and a Glaswegian in between the two.)-¡Adios, Ann Coulter!

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To be an individualist and libertarian is to understand that no one, anywhere, should ever be aggressed against by anyone, and that the state is the principal form of institutionalized aggression in our world.— Anthony Gregory

"Political tags, such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth, are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."-- Robert A. Heinlein

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."--Thomas Jefferson

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast." - Mark Twain

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert Anton Wilson